Advertisement
Published: July 10th 2006
Edit Blog Post
We made the 4 hour (turned out to be 5 hours) bus journey to Phuket, the bonus was we got to watch the new film of the 'Posiden Adventure' except it was in Thai! At Phuket we decided that we would head to Patong Beach so we could find Kevin's Bar (My mom's cousin). On the way we were once again ripped off by a taxi driver, will we ever learn to barter. Got to our Guesthouse and went to check out the beach. The first thing we noticed was the amount of bars there were, there were hundreds of them. The beach was nice the waves were quite rough. All along the front were people showing pictures of the damage after the tsunami, 18 months you would not know anything had happened, except for the many tsunami evacuation signs. We looked for Kevins bar but could not see it, however down every street there was another row of bars so we thought that we would look for it again later. We booked a tour to James Bond Island for the next day.
We awoke early to meet the tour bus but waited for over half an hour and had
Elephant Trekking
Mal and Carol are on the left of the photo, there elephant had bad wind or was that Mal? convinced ourselves that we had been conned and nobody was coming. Eventually the mini bus did turn up, we ended up being the last to be picked up instead of the first like planned - typical. This is where we met an Australian couple called Mal & Carol (Hi, Guys!). They were really nice. Our first activity was elephant trekking, i was feeling quite nervous about this so i was glad that we were getting over and done with. We sat on our elephant, i was so worried about hurting it but you could feel how tough its skin was. However, the seat we sat on didn't feel safe, everytime the elephant took a step it felt like we were going to plummet to the floor. At one point the elephant stepped down a steep decline and we had to hold on really tight, it was scary because we were at the front and could see what was ahead of us first. I started to panic when all i could see ahead was a big muddy lake - i kept asking "we're not going in there, are we?!" But oh yes, we went into the deep lake and i really
didn't like it. When back on dry land the driver of the elephant jumped off to take our photo, he then told me to sit on the elephants head but i refused to move, so Ollie got up there instead for a photo, he then told Ollie to guide the elephant back, just as he was about to i grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, pulled him back and said "NO WAY!". I've seen reality Tv when good animals go bad! I did not fancy Nelly going loopy without the proffesional bloke sitting on his head! Once safely on my own legs we went to watch the baby elephant show, there was a cute 4 year old elephant doing tricks, they are clever animals, i just hope that they are well treated. The guide told us how there were no animal deaths after the tsunami and that all elephant and dogs disappeared and reappeared 10 days later as they had sensed the approaching disaster. We then ventured to the next stop the Monkey Temple, needless to say there were monkies everywhere. I had read on the internet that they had rabies so wasn't in any rush to feed
them! Inside a massive cave was a recling Buddha and lots of worshipping shrines, there was also a monument of all the bones of a family that had lived in the cave. There was a dark cave with lots of stinky bats in, Ollie and Mal went inside but Carol and I stayed outside and watched because we did not want to get pooed on. Back inside the cave temple it had a 1bht fortune machine. Mal put some money in and it spun round to no. 13 and i said i thought it was an unlucky number. Carol went to the bored and pulled off the piece of paper from the no. 13. Mal took it to the guide to translate and he said it was a really bad one to get and that something bad would happen. I was glad that i did not have a go at this machine! Our next stop was to get the boat to the floating village. We had lunch which was nice and then had a walk around. There was some girls that were trying to get people to have their photo taken with some gibbons they were holding. They were so
cute, like babies sucking their thumbs. The floating village was actually on stilts in the sea (not actually floating). It was so strange and both would not like to live there. From here we made our way to Jmaes Bond Island. This is featured in the film, the man with the Golden Gun, i have never seen it so now i will have to. Basically, it is a funny shaped rock, thousands of people go to see other than that there was not much else to see but glad we went anyway. Our next stop was sea canoeing, ollie and I, Mal and Carol had opted not to do this instead we sat up stairs on the big boat and waited for the rest of our group. We had a good laugh about some of the british comedies that Australia TV shows and were glad we had sat under the canopy of the boat as it rained really heavy. After about 40 mins our guide called us to leave. We picked up our glasses and headed for the stairs. As i got to the stairs i held back to tell everbody to becareful as the steps were wet and slippery.
With that, poor Carol took the first step and her flip-flop slipped and we watched in horror as she went head first down the entire flight of steel stairs and crashed to the bottom. Mal flew down the stairs and got her off the floor thats when we saw all the blood. Carol had several deep cuts caused by the glass that she was carrying as she fell. Luckly one of our group members knew first aid and quickly helped stop the bleeding and bandaged her up best he could until we reached the floating village where she was cleaned up some more by a doctor. Carol had a fantastic attitude and delt with the situation really well, even saying that it would not ruin her holiday. Once back on dry land, Mal and Carol were dropped off at the tour office where they were taken to Patong hospital by car. We established that Carol had touched the unlucky 13 piece of fortune paper first and that is why the bad accident happened to her. Subsequently, Mal and Carol have e mailed and they are both fine.
After failing to find Kevin's bar we decided we would head for
Karon Beach...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0397s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
Dawn
non-member comment
wow!
Hi Amy and Ollie - you look like you are having the time of your life! I absolutley LOVE elephants, they are my favourite animal and would LOVE to see one in the wild so i am so so jealous of the pictures you have there. I envy you both - have a wonderful time - James Bond Island look spectacular - take care of each other - love reading what you are up too Hugs dawn Craig and Liam xx